The Obligatory New Year’s Post, or, I’m Too Old for Revolutions

A few year’s ago, I explained that we used to call them “New Year’s Revolutions.” This was supposed to indicate an intention to shake things up by changing something, irretrievably.

I’ve had quite enough shaking up the past few years. Just read my posts under the tag, “how not to” and you’ll get the idea. I’ll keep it simple, and more age appropriate this year, to wit:

A Sixty Year Old Widow’s Age-Appropriate Resolutions

  1.  If it’s an available option, always choose sleep.
  2. You really can’t eat that much anymore. So don’t. Embrace portion control.
  3. Enjoy your invisibility, and protect it by keeping your opinions to yourself.
  4. More reading, less TV.
  5. Prepare, and begin to pursue, bucket list.

That’s it.

I went back and reread last year’s obligatory New Year’s post, and found that I either didn’t do what I said I would, or did, and backed off quickly. After floundering around for most of the year, I got a really great job. Now I’m focused on doing it well, and keeping it for as long as I can.

Figuring out how to keep up with writing while working full time is a challenge, but I’m determined to do it.  I think goals are different than resolutions, so:

A Sixty Year Old Widow’s Writing Goals for 2020

  1. Finish querying first book.
  2. Write next book.
  3. Submit one piece of creative non-fiction or essay per week.
  4. Tally rejections proudly – they mean you tried.
  5. Find something to write about other than yourself.

Easier said than done.

OK, bucket list. Hmm. Don’t know if a bucket list should meet that organizational standard, “SMART” goals – specific, measurable (how do you measure the happiness you get from doing something you always wanted to do?) attainable, relevant, and time-bound (a bucket list is by definition time-bound – it’s a list of stuff you want to get done before you die). I don’t know if any of these are “SMART,” but here’s stuff I want to (or must) do before I die, in no particular order:

  1. Downhill ski, again.  Apparently, ski equipment is so different since I last went, I’ll have to relearn skiing altogether. Or find some really old skis and boots on eBay.
  2. Learn how to skate, and stop, on hockey skates. Just because.
  3. Find the money to go and someone trustworthy to care for Angelic Daughter (and get Angelic Daughter set up with an acceptable, safe, happy independent living situation – that’s a must do) while I visit New Zealand, Australia (what’s left of it, after all the fires, so awful! thinking of you, Aussies!) Alaska and Ireland. Can’t think why I haven’t visited Ireland yet.
  4. Get a book published. By a real, legit publisher. I want my obit to say, “Author of…”
  5. Find a sane, non-pyschotic, non-gaslighting, non-mansplaining, binary, heterosexual he/him to love, who loves me back. If such a being exists. There’s always hope.

Recently, I’ve been behaving as if I have lost hope – eating too much, not working out- and I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to give up on myself, my well-being and my chance, if there is any, to find love. I’ve been encouraged by my recent discovery that sleeping a full 8 hours a night takes ten years off my face. Who knew?

Today, I woke up feeling great. Yes, I woke up on New Year’s Day feeling wonderful. Probably because I spent the evening reading, and went to bed early, without watching on TV or participating in any of the forced gaiety of midnight celebrations and associated consumption of mass quantities of alcohol, a/k/a getting shitfaced (pissed, legless, paralytic, sloshed, plastered, wasted, etc. The English language has an extraordinary selection of words to identify the state of inebriation). Not that I didn’t raise a glass or three, but at least I had the sense to cut myself off and go to bed at a reasonable hour.

These past few years have given me, individually, and us, collectively, a lot of reasons to lose hope. But let’s just not. New year, new decade (yes, I’m on the “2020 starts the new decade, not 2021” team) and new chances to try to do the right thing, every new day we’re granted, every day we wake up, miraculously, again.

Happy New Year and Happy New Decade: may yours be filled with hope and mornings waking up feeling wonderful (and at my age, just waking up at all should count as feeling wonderful, even when my joints go snap, crackle, pop when I first get out of bed). I think of those sounds as the music of movement, and a reason to keep going.

Until next time, I remain,

Your tart-cherry juice drinking, ginger-turmeric tea swilling, arising gratefully, and absurdly early, to get to a great job on time,

Ridiculouswoman

Image by Jeff Jacobs from Pixabay

Visitations: Non-Christmas Carol Versions

My dreams are either weird, or so real they wake me up sweating, laughing or crying.

I recently had two dreams that stuck with me – the first, a weird, “what the hell was that?” –  the second, a visitation.

First: I was downtown, late, on a dark, deserted street under the el (elevated train tracks, for you non-Chicagoans.) This was not a place anyone should be, late at night. Angelic Daughter was with me. I have no idea why we were there. The Bulgarian came out of a red door in an old office building, onto the sidewalk, then into the street. He was talking to a woman while he helped her pack her car. I overheard him say he and his wife were expecting a baby.

In the dream, he looked at me, and recognized me, but didn’t acknowledge me. I smiled, because I knew he was afraid I’d butt into his conversation, and wanted me to leave him alone, which I thought was funny.  Angelic Daughter was standing closer to him, and said hello, calling him by name, and he responded to her kindly before disappearing back into the building.

I have no idea if the Bulgarian is married, or if he is, or is to be, a father. He was very private around me (can you blame him?) But I had thought occasionally how great it would be if he had kids. He was kind and patient. I thought he’d make a great Dad; and if he had sons, they’d be adorable, burly little black-haired mini-Bulgarians, running around the unnecessarily childproofed basement the Bulgarian finished for Mike and me.

Damn, he looked good in that dream. Like the picture above.  But except for the black hair, he doesn’t look anything like that diver. No beard. He said he had tattoos, but I never saw them.  He was not as lean.

After he disappeared, I was suddenly in some dark, scary, back alley parking lot.  Leaves smouldered near a wood fence. I tried to pat them out with my hands, but couldn’t, so I tried to call the fire department, but didn’t have an address.  I panicked because I left Angelic Daughter alone while I went to look for the building number.

Freudian, much? Lost? Terrified, leaving Angelic Daughter (for a new job?) Parking lot – Stuck?

I have shaken off my ridiculous crush on the Bulgarian, but it made me feel less alone. Without it, my subconscious thinks I’m down a dark alley, in a dangerous parking lot, putting Angelic Daughter at risk. And something’s burning. Yikes.

Second dream: a visitation and a smackdown. I deserved it.

When I started my wonderful new job, the company introduced new hires in a weekly meeting, asking us where we were from, what our role was, and for a “fun fact.” My “fun fact” was that I attended the same high school and had the same English teacher as Dave Eggers. You know, Dave Eggers? McSweeney’s? A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius? The Circle?

Crickets.

I’m several years older than Dave Eggers. But apparently he’s old enough for my young coworkers not to be familiar with him.

So, I did a bad thing.  I pulled out my Chris Farley connection. My young colleagues lit up when I said I had performed with Farley. Which is true. I was on an improv team with him, nearly thirty years ago. When he showed up.

I don’t like name dropping.

Neither does Farls, it seems.

I dreamt Farley was helicoptered in to perform in some black-box theater as a ringer for the next show.  He walked through the space toward me and spoke to a woman standing next to me. Then he looked straight at me, as if he didn’t recognize me. Or as if he did, and wasn’t pleased.

I got the message. Stop dropping my name. You didn’t really know me.

Which is true. He lit the sky I happened to be under for a few months, and then was off, to light up other skies over other people. Then he was gone. A meteor, a bright flame. Flamed out.

Sorry, Farls. This is the last time I’ll drop your name. But the dream was so real, and so funny.  You looked sculpted and fit (real Chippendale’s dancer!)

I’m sure that’s what Farley looks like in eternity, if he wants to.

May your dreams be filled with loving visitations, or little smackdowns, if you need them. Or a handsome Bulgarian who has found his own love and happiness, I hope.

Still hoping for some love and happiness to return again in my life, I remain,

Your stressed out, grateful for the new job but worried about Angelic Daughter, gaining weight and not worrying about it enough,

Ridiculouswoman

Diver Image by rodolfo_waterloo from Pixabay

I Wanna Dance with Somebody: or, No Crying at the Company Party, Please

“Oh, I wanna dance with somebody…” Right, Whitney, wail on!

“I wanna feel the HEAT with somebo-day-ay-ay…” You go!

“Oh, I wanna dance with somebody…” Yes, I think we’ve established that.

“with somebody who LOVES me….”

Oh shit.

Suddenly on the brink of tears in the middle of the company holiday party, because of an old Whitney Houston song?

The company, my new employer, has shown astonishing generosity and kindness to me in my scant one month’s time there. The very minute I learned of the company holiday party, I made a  reservation and arranged for care for Angelic Daughter. Couldn’t decide on a dress to wear, so I brought two: a beaded, flapper-style sequined cocktail dress, that cost a month’s rent thirty years ago, and a tasteful black and white ball gown with three-quarter sleeves, a collar and pockets(!) The kind lady at the dry cleaner’s got it hemmed in just four days, but I didn’t have time to alter the bodice, which was made for someone at least four inches taller than I. So to keep it from gaping in the front, I held the dress down with one hand behind my back when I approached the dance floor to bob and swish around a little.

There was an inordinate amount of rap shuffled with a few oldies, including the inevitable, the unavoidable, the ubiquitous, the eternal “Livin’ on a Prayer.” Much of the dancing from the young people was, I suspect, done “ironically.” But everyone was beautifully dressed, and truly seemed to be having a great time.

I was happily sitting alone, watching the merriment. I must have gotten up to head to the bar for a refill when, on the return trip to the table, that Whitney Houston song came on. I joined in the dancing…right up until that problematic lyric.

“….with sombody who LUUUUUVS me-eeee-eee-eee..”

The somebody who loved me has been dead for over 3 years.

I didn’t expect to dance with anyone at this party, and wasn’t upset about that. So it was a shock how instantly tears formed when that lyric hit me – exposing the stark loneliness of not having someone who loved me there with me.

Not that he would have danced. Mike was the embodiment of the stereotypical “white man dancing:”  stiff, awkward, no fluidity in the hips.

I sat down as soon as I realized what was happening – I was in danger of lapsing into tears in the middle of a festive, happy occasion. I got control of myself and held it together. No smeared mascara (and I was wearing mascara, and a thin streak of eyeliner, for the first time in something like twenty -five years. Astonishingly, I didn’t make a smudgy mess of it when I put it on.)

I talked to Mike as I assessed myself in the mirror before leaving the hotel room to go down to the ballroom.

“Not bad, huh, loves?”

I imagined him smiling approval.

I’m learning to live with loneliness, and to accept that it isn’t really ever going to go away. I have many wonderful new things in my life – the rooms I worked so hard to redecorate, the new job, Angelic Daughter’s amazing ability to adapt and gain independence and maintain a positive attitude in the midst of these changes. But Mike’s absence walks with me every step of the way. I think of it as a wise companion. I don’t get overexcited about much of anything, anymore, because that calm shadow reminds me how silly it is to dwell on fleeting nonsense in the presence of eternity.

Alone, again, here at my laptop, my wonderful old Vaio that Mike requisitioned from me almost as soon as I brought it home, I allow the tears to come. I thought this fourth Christmas without him would be easier.  The tree is set up in a different room, the new pattern of outside lights extends the classic swag I always hang across the front porch.

But it’s not easier. Mike is still every bit as gone, and we’re still every bit as alone.

I’m planning a very quiet holiday,  just the two of us at home, indulging in two quiet days of togetherness and rest, sitting with Mike’s absence.  Tears that may come are part of the deal. Happiness, when it emerges, will wrap itself around the tears, and around the absence and the sorrow. It may muffle them,  but I know now it can never make them disappear.

Blowing my nose, wiping my eyes and seeing Mike clearly, “regarding the tree,” as we used to do together, I remain,

Your quieter, older, slower, calmer, sadder but more grateful for each moment of smiles and tears,

Ridiculouswoman

 

 

Full Heart Friday

The email came on a break from the all-day training seminar that closed out my first week at my fantastic new job: my essay, Imperfection, is up on Ruminate Magazine‘s blog, The Waking. I felt a flash of nerves, then clicked on the link and re-read it, and felt – not so much pride as a grateful sense of satisfaction. There, I did it. My work has been published. Again.

I spent the rest of the break telling all the amazingly welcoming, kind, fun, brilliant and interesting coworkers who checked in with me to see how I was doing how welcoming, kind, fun, brilliant and interesting they are.  It was an amazing first week, and before the end of it I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this was the best workplace I’ve ever been invited to be a part of, and the best job I had ever been lucky enough to be offered and to accept.

And on top of all that, I got a pingback from a blog I follow, “Confessions of Middle Aged Woman” who gave my post, “Hired” some props, in a happy, slightly freaked-out post of her own, along the same lines.  So I’ve had a kind of “it doesn’t get better than this” kind of week. Had to stop at the grocery store on the way home, and I noticed myself thinking, “here I am, an employed person squeezing in a trip to the store after a great week at work.” For a long time I’d been envious of those nicely dressed people, obviously tired and preoccupied, who were stopping to do a quick errand before they could get home and unwind. Not really something to be jealous of, unless you’ve been out of that world for quite a while when you really needed to be in it. And you know that being back in it will be good for you, and for your family. That felt good.

Sure, there were a few bumps – arrangements for Angelic Daughter aren’t sufficiently settled, but we’re muddling through, and just when I was at my wit’s end about it, a few other possibilities arose.

I’m exhilarated, exhausted and excited, all at once. Still trying to establish a new routine, but it’s getting done. One thing I know I’ll have to do is abandon my “800 Words” game, at least for a while, because I’ll have to squeeze blogging in to an hour or so after dinner on Fridays or Saturdays – might have to write a week’s worth and schedule them to post, because between getting up at 5:30 a.m. and prepping everything and hitting the road by 6:40, I won’t have a lot of time. I’ve been averaging about 4 hours of sleep a night this week, not sure why. Just waking up at 3 or 3:30 and unable to get back to zzzzzzzz.

Things will settle, I’m sure. Handy brother came on short notice to help out today. Prearranged unpaid absence to wait for the new downstairs bathroom vanity countertop, and rescheduled, routine if unpleasant medical testing will be got out of the way next week, and then it’s full on until the holidays.

Early this morning on my new commute, the full (or nearly still full) moon was still well up in the morning sky, after putting on a lovely glow the past few nights. I find moonilght soothing, and the un-set moon in the morning sky reassuring.  Faith got me through to this point, and I’m counting on it to get me to the day when our new normal becomes – normal.

I’m going to go have “music time” with angelic daughter and then drag myself upstairs to wind down, for the start of the first weekend that really feels like a weekend, where tasks and errands need to get done in two days, instead of just whenever in a long line of days after days. A weekend that will be for what it is supposed to be for, resting, spending time with family and then preparing for Monday, when I will get that exhilarating feeling of going back to work for my first full week on the fabulous new job.

Oh, and if you read my essay, don’t worry about me – one thing I know about this job is that is isn’t going to make me feel anxious. Or if it does, I have strategies to handle that. Compartments. Gratitude. Support.

Well, there I did it anyway – almost up to 800 words.  Looking forward to my new schedule and my new routine, I remain,

Your grateful, excited, exhausted, not going to drag it out just to get all the way to 800 words,

Ridiculouswoman

Featured image by stux on Pixabay

Autumn Reprise

Well, lookit you, November. Didn’t know you had it in ya. Very nicely done.

That slant of afternoon light is there, the bright blue of the sky and a blanket of gold on the lawn from leaves brought down by the weight of snow, now melted. My phone’s camera just can’t do it justice.

I got the fire started, and the S’mores made. Lit the Jack-o-Lanters for a few extra nights, until they took their place in the new compost heap that used to be the chicken run.

Mine is the only lawn on the block still covered with leaves, but I don’t care. The lawn guy suddenly seems to expect me to pay him in advance, before any work is done for the month.  Electric mowers are getting cheaper, and I had fun raking up a few bags of leaves to start the chicken-run compost. So maybe I’ll just handle it myself next year.

Angelic Daughter and I are gearing up for big changes; my going back to work full-time will mean she has to step up, step out and deal with new transportation, new people and new activities. I’ve been amazed and grateful and what a positive attitude she’s shown about it.

Anytime we have to change something that affects how she lives, what she does, where she goes and with whom she spends her time, it rattles me to the core. But I’ve got to suck it up and trust her. And trust God, who seems to keep throwing just what we need in our path just when we need it.

It’s concert week, and the choir I sing with is doing some incredibly beautiful, comforting music.  When the sound melds into one from out of the many and becomes a thing in itself, a perfect merger of text and music that swells or hushes with the promise of “lux aeterna” or the plea of “dona eis requiem,” I still get goosebumps.

I thought I’d be scrambling, but within the past two weeks everything came together to make sure Angelic Daughter has a companion while I’m at the rehearsals and performances we didn’t have covered yet, and even that she will be able to attend the concert. I can function when I know she is safe and well cared for.

Which is why this going back to work thing, as necessary and welcome as it is, still feels daunting. This has to work this time – I just can’t be interrupted with phone calls or texts constantly (while I simultaneously worry about why I’m not being interrupted with phone calls or texts constantly).

If you’re a parent you’ll never forget the first day of school, that autumn when you had to turn around and go, leaving your child in kindergarten. Maybe yours took it in stride (as did Angelic Daughter) but it didn’t stop the tears from forming, even if you were trying to hide them.

Fast forward through twenty years, and imagine having that experience over and over again, with each change of teacher, aide, school building or enrichment program. Will she be safe? Will she be happy? Will they understand her? Will she get any benefit out of this?

And now it’s happening again.

I’m counting on deep breathing, the kindness of people in our (relatively) small community, and help that keeps showing up unexpectedly, right on time.

So I’ll pack lunches the night before, (who am I kidding, I’ll do it in a mad rush in the morning) like I used to do. I’ll make laminated schedules and 3″ x 5″ card reminders and tape them to doors and put them in purses; I’ll add a few additional emergency contacts to her phone while also trying to teach her not to bother them unless it is a real emergency.

Tomorrow we find out if we’re set with the new program she tried out today, to fill her most of her day when I’m at work. I can’t imagine they won’t take her. She liked it and seemed really happy. I hope they don’t pull that rug, and leave us scrambling again.

Breathe.

I don’t want the lawn guys to come, yet. I want to savor this day, with the golden blanket of leaves, that remind me that beauty can come even when you thought the chance had passed.

I’m looking out the window through that gorgeous slant of sunlight, at the new chicken run compost heap with the Jack-o-Lanterns half buried in leaves, thinking about phases of life and how things that pass can transform into things that nourish the future.

Hoping I’ll catch the lawn guys when they do come, to ask them to empty the leaves and grass clippings into the chicken run compost, I remain,

Your happy, hopeful and still anxious as usual,

Ridiculouswoman

Sic Transit Gloria

Sunday, October 27, would have been Mike’s  58th birthday.  It was a perfect, bright blue fall day,  trees like those above, in full autumn glory.

Here’s a picture from today, four days later:

IMG_20191031_143942791.jpg

One week ago:

IMG_20191024_102731260~2.jpg

Today:

IMG_20191031_085642038.jpg

October’s beauty is bittersweet: it can’t last. This year we waited through rain and clouds most of the month until a sudden burst of clear skies and blazing color in the last ten days or so. I’ve learned that, except for treating Angelic Daughter to trail rides at stables we only get to once or twice a year, leaf-peeping isn’t a good reason for our  “fall excursions.” The colors are always more beautiful at back at home.

Yet something has felt off-kilter about this year’s weather, from polar vortex to spring monsoons, to a bone-dry August and then a sodden September. Everything has been more of whatever it is than usual. Colder, wetter, drier, cloudier.  We had very few sparkling clear nights, all year. The crystal black, star-sparkling nights are one of the things I look forward to about winter. I hope that hasn’t changed for good.

Today it feels like someone sped up the film (a terrible idea, and yes, I’m looking at you, Netflix). I’m carving pumpkins when I could be building a snowman. Did someone steal Richard Hendricks’ compression algorithm (Silicon Valley)  and apply it to the turn of the seasons?

We’ve had snow on Halloween before, but not like this, that I can remember. Usually, rotten Halloween weather is cold and rainy, with maybe a few fat flakes that don’t stick. But out my window now are 3-4 inches of heavy, sticky wet snow, causing branches to sag and completely covering the yard.  It’s not cold enough for snow to stick to the driveway or the walk, but there is enough to discourage any but the most intrepid, determined trick-or-treaters. We’ve had none, and the sanctioned window for ringing doorbells is closing. I foresee a night of appallingly self-indulgent over-consumption of uncollected chocolate -followed by a 30 minute full-body dumbbell burner guilt workout tomorrow morning.

There really is nothing spooky or eerie or creepy or Halloweenish about snow.  I lit the Jack-o-Lanterns anyway, but I’m not really feeling the “door between worlds” effect. Angelic Daughter wants S’mores, and snow makes a great backdrop to initiate the fireplace for the season. If I can get a fire started, that is, because it was windy, and the logs in the small wood rack on the front porch got coated in an inch or so of snow.  I foresee an expletive-filled evening and the waste of an entire box of matches.  But I’ll get it going.

Snow will melt off tomorrow, but the glory that is October is done and gone. Smores made indoors in the fireplace won’t capture the crisp, outdoor, sweatery October feeling that Angelic Daughter used to get on an annual school trip to a pumpkin farm, but they will have to do.  Each year the autumn flare seems more fleeting than the last. But that’s what makes it glorious, I guess.

I finally sold Mike’s kitchen table, on his birthday. Got ten bucks for it on eBay. The guy who bought it drove an hour to pick it up. I was almost going to give up and donate it somewhere, but I’m glad I got at least something for it. kitchen tableThat table was the only material thing, other than books, clothes and a hurricane lamp, that Mike brought with him into our marriage. The guy who bought it asked how long I had it – “27 years” – and acknowledged that it must carry a lot of memories. I did.

Letting go of  27 years worth of memories on Mike’s birthday,  the 27th, is something he would have gotten a kick out of, I think, or at least appreciated the symmetry of it.

We have a new dining room table now,  but today I put on Mike’s old grey sweater, the one with the growing holes in it that I wear when shoveling or otherwise dealing with outdoor maintenance in cold weather, and smiled. IMG_20180831_135250.jpgHere’s to you, loves, one season passed and another beginning, wrapped in something that once wrapped you with warmth, and now wraps me in memories.

We hoped that Mike could make it to an October day like last Sunday, to see the blue sky and blaze of  leaves as he departed this world for the next. Instead, he died on a sweltering August night.  “This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong, to love that well, which thou must leave ere long.”

Tomorrow begins gray November, the ghost of October’s colors whispering only in the gourds and Indian corn of a Thanksgiving to come.

Blowing out the candles in the Jack-o-Lanterns and off to make the fire, I remain,

Ridiculouswoman

Hired

Featured Image by TeroVesalainen from Pixabay

The other shoe has dropped: I got a job. I GOT A JOB. Not just any job, either – it’s a writing job. Full time, with benefits starting the exact day I must have them. I start mid-November. And the best part about it is that I’m not anxious about it at all. I know I can do it well and I won’t get all squirmy about it. A little of that is inevitable, of course, as it would be with any new job.  But I’ve signed the offer letter accepting the job and I have enough to do before I start that I don’t think I’ll spend any time worrying about the myriad ways I could imagine screwing it up.

Because I’m not going to screw it up. As God is my witness, I’m not going to screw this up. If I can avoid it. And if I can stop worrying about screwing it up over something I didn’t realize would screw it up. OK ENOUGH, Annie. YOU GOT IT. THEY WANT YOU (Note impressive self-restraint in not going the Sally Field quote route, here).

I wrote the below about 10 minutes after the call offering me the job. As you can see I was a bit excited. I still am, I’m just not going to scream at you in ALL CAPS. But reading it through it was kind of funny so I thought I’d go ahead and inflict it on you.

So here’s my brain on “holy crap I actually got a job I’m going to like that pays a living wage!”

I GOT THE OFFER AND THEY BUMPED UP THE PAY RATE SO IT WILL ACTUALLY BE WORTH THE COMMUTE I GOT THE JOB I GOT THE JOB I GOT THE JOB THANKS FOR ALL YOUR GOOD VIBES SORRY TO SCREAM AT YOU IN ALL CAPS BUT I’M SO EXCITED BECAUSE I’M ACTUALLY GOING TO LIKE THIS JOB IT WILL BE FUN IT IS WRITING AND I WILL GET PAID FOR WRITING HOLY CRAP WITH HEALTH INSURANCE AND EVERYTHING GOD IS GREAT FAITH WORKS HANG ON GOOD THINGS WILL COME OMG OMG OMG NOW I HAVE TO HIRE SOMEONE AS A COMPANION FOR ANGELIC DAUGHTER BUT WE CAN HANDLE IT OMG OMG OMG AN ACTUAL JOB WRITING WRITING WOWEE ZOWEE AND ON TOP OF THAT ONE OF MY LIFE’S AMBITIONS JUST CAME TRUE OF HOSTING A FAMILY MEAL IN THIS HOUSE I’VE SPENT SO MUCH MONEY AND ENERGY ON MY BROTHERS AND ONE OF MY SISTERS-IN-LAW CAME AND WE HAD SUCH A FUN MEAL IT WASN’T LONG ENOUGH AND I WAS RUSHED MAKING THE SOUP AND OH BY THE WAY I DID MAKE THE SOUP HERE’S A PICTURE IMG_20191022_141943840~2.jpg AND NOT EXACTLY PIE BECAUSE I DIDN’T HAVE  TIME FOR THE CRUST SO I MADE A FRENCH FRUIT TART CRUST WHICH WAS OK BUT NOT MY BEST IMG_20191022_141935304~2.jpgAND I BROWNED THE ONIONS IN THE SQUASH SOUP BUT THE BURNT-ISH FLAVOR WAS ALMOST COVERED UP BY SOME EXTRA APPLE JUICE AND BROWN SUGAR AND THEY SAID THEY LIKED IT BUT EVEN IF THEY WERE LYING I DON’T CARE BECAUSE THIS HAS BEEN A SPECTACULAR DAY EVEN THOUGH IT IS COLD AND WINDY I DON’T CARE MY GOD I ACTUALLY GOT A JOB OFFER AND BESIDES THAT ONE OF MY CNF ESSAYS HAS BEEN ACCEPTED IT’S A BLOG BUT IT IS A BLOG ASSOCIATED WITH A MAGAZINE AND IT MEANS SOMEONE WHO KNOWS ABOUT WRITING THINKS I CAN ACTUALLY WRITE THIS IS AMAZING WHAT DO I DO WHAT DO I DO AM I SUPPOSED TO POST A GIF LIKE THIS

OR MAYBE THIS

THAT REMINDS ME I’VE NEVER SEEN THOSE MINIONS MOVIES I SHOULD WATCH THOSE ANGELIC DAUGHTER WANTS POPCORN SO MAYBE WE CAN HAVE MOVIE NIGHT OMG OMG OMG A WRITING JOB WITH HEALTH INSURANCE I HOPE I DON’T HAVE A HEART ATTACK WITH JOY BEFORE I EVEN START BRING IT I CAN DO IT I CAN WRITE ANYTHING TO ORDER LIKE FALLING OFF A LOG THIS IS SO AWESOME I’M JUMPING OUT OF MY SKIN WHAT DO I DO NOW I HAVE TO WAIT FOR AN EMAIL TO SIGN OFF ON THE OFFER WHICH MEANS I REALLY SHOULDN’T BE CROWING ABOUT THIS SO MUCH IN CASE I JINX IT BUT LIVE WITHOUT FEAR I GOT IT I GOT IT I GOT IT I WILL BE AN EMPLOYED PERSON AT A JOB I ACTUALLY WILL LOVE WITH ENERGETIC FUN PEOPLE WHO LOVE WHAT THEY DO IT DOESN’T GET BETTER THAN THIS OR MAYBE IT DOES KEEP DREAMING KEEP BELIEVING MAYBE GOOD THINGS WILL KEEP HAPPENING OK ANNIE DON’T GET GREEDY JUST BE GRATEFUL GRATEFUL GRATEFUL I AM I AM I AM WHOOP WHOOP THIS IS AWESOME

Trying to resume decorum, I remain,

Your newly hired,

Ridiculouswoman